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This'll probably be the last thread I make regarding improvement, the game is about as milked out in content it can be. I decided to do it now because EU tier 10 is 3 arties every game so I don't really feel like I'm missing out by writing this up instead of playing. I'll also start off by saying that any question you might have (to me specifically) about anything game related when it comes to improvement, preventing tilt, getting out of a rut and so on all the way to tank/map specific things (opening positions, counters, timings, you name it) are things I will do my best to answer in this thread, if it isn't then ask it here and I'll answer to the best of my ability. It's also very little concrete advice here as the meta game gets trickier the higher you go, if you have any concrete questions to give the bones some meat then please do so. I play this game with absolutely no regard for the outside economy as the account I'm using has 450million credits with almost as much in consumables and there is nothing to grind on the account, it's simply missing some premiums and rewards. I also have acceptable crews for almost everything, and if I don't I switch them out. I don't take outside factors into consideration in the game. I won't keep firing AP instead of APCR for some extra credits at the cost of performance. I give myself the best chance of having as good of a game possible before loading into battle, and if you care about performance then you should too. I am not in the normal position of a WoT player here, as these things really matter early on. A playstyle like this is sustained either through spending money on the game, or a heavy amount of skrims before hitting random battles to keep your economy positive throughout. This has very little to do with direct game performance but the economy in WoT is a foundation you should build solid as it'll help prevent the most basic problems for a tryhard mentality. Running out of credits has happened to many, many players before strongholds were a thing. Stronghold skirmishes also solves some of the issues for a good service record, if you want a good overall service record on a tank the crew needs to be good, all modules researched and the best ones mounted before loading into randoms altogether. Radios are debatable but to me it's a matter of principle, if it's better I will run it even if the cost/benefit of researching is incredibly low. Making purchases on sale, stocking up on rations and big kits and so on to the point where it will last you until the next opportunity to do the same is where you'll want to be at or further in your economy. If you can sustain buying all your consumables up front for the entire period when it's on sale and holding off on tanks if they'll be discounted in the foreseeable future, your monetary problems in the game go down by so much. It is a long road to set your economy up that way, as it requires a lot of grinding. You're going from being a customer of consumables and equipment to owning your own depot. If it didn't require a lot of work then everyone would be doing this in the real world too, but it really is the most sensible way of not running into monetary problems as it is one of the biggest issues regarding performance. Not in the performance today, but in your ability to perform in the future. I'm lucky enough to not have to play skirmishes or spend money on the game now. Premium time, clan boosts and personal reserves make for break even or better with discounted consumables in even the most credit hungry tanks (50B, SConq, E 50 etc) with acceptable performance on them. This is probably where the real thread starts but I felt like making note of how much your outside economy matters and how setting it up to supplement you in the future really makes a difference. I am at the end with no problems at all, all tanks bought, equipped and credits are in overflow to the point where I have my next 15k games already paid in advance. Not having problem with credits ever again is a really big thing. For most players seeking to improve however this'd translate to playing a lot of skirmishes, or buying it with real money. Regardless of what you choose, taking steps towards a more sound economic structure along the way is something I really recommend. Eliminating one of the core problems of having an outside economy (unsustainable costs) while still being able to reap the benefits (other people also have unsustainable costs, and as a result they will ultimately perform worse because of it). I think about my game in two ways. The battle I just loaded in to play on its own, and then all the battles I played and will play for the session. For the first, economy doesn't matter. For the second one it does. I'll go more into separating your gameplay into these two later, but it's important to remember through out. Time to start the topic for real: I'll be answering the most commonly asked questions I get regarding improvement, consistency and on keeping an emotional distance and a professional mindset towards the game. I cannot stress this enough: Having a worker-attitude towards the game fixes a lot of anger management issues the game presents you with, but in doing so you'll start sucking out the fun as well. I enjoy the game enough (although in periods) that I still get enjoyment out of playing with a pro-active mindset to improve. This is where a lot of people fall short and it's totally understandable. An improving mindset is a really boring one. You are playing with an improving purpose, and not an enjoyment purpose. I'd say that I enjoy myself the most in a game where I just play and zone out until the game is over. Back in reality, basically a small escape from the real world for a while until you're forced to do whatever the real world requires of you. Thinking of your game in a similar way takes a lot of fun out of it, as being emotionally invested is an obstacle to overcome to reliable results. Luckily I am a competitive person, so I get my enjoyment out of good results, and many people are similar. This means that you treat the game as you would an assignment from a school, employer or whatever. It already sounds a lot less fun. You are playing to improve. This means that every rambo-like feeling you get out of casually playing goes out the window just as fast as the aggressive emotions that many people already struggle with fighting off. You can't be emotionally invested either way, as your emotions will influence your decision making that you want to be as pure in logic and reason as they can. Because of this, you'll want to distance yourself emotionally from the game just like a bad habit in real life. The boss forcing you on overtime means you suck it up even though you're pissed. You are mad because things aren't going the way you wanted and there's no easy fix for that. A worker mindset of adapting to it to the best of your ability and getting better at accepting whatever comes your way to get over it as soon as possible is the best way of dealing with it. This means that everything in the game that is out of your control is something not worth investing into emotionally. This includes everything from being XVM-yoloed, arty-whored or RNG putting a consecutive 4 shots at the edge of reticle. What exactly does an emotional investment get you here? Only fuel to a fire you already want to put out, your emotions are counterproductive right from the get go. This means that you have to let things like these go. They do nothing for improving your current game and only raise the tension for the games to come. Bad experiences from your current game should be left there, with anything positive to take from it should be at least considered. When sporting a working mindset you'll simply structure your gameplay in a way that you keep refining and re-evaluating your decisions and replace your bad tendencies with good ones. This is how I do it: Step 1. This is almost always initial deployment. Make up and decide where to go on the map on the spot after you've read the line-up and estimated the general deployment. Step 1 should at least have some benefits of going there, if it doesn't your step 1 is not good enough. This is everything from favourable terrain, free crossing shots, vision, tank advantage on flank and so on. How much damage is there going to be at step 1? - Try to answer. If you were right, focus on step 2. If you were wrong, think about why. Sometimes this is not taking slow mobility into account, or trading poorly too early etc. Personal misplay is an answer you are going to have to admit a lot of times here, Step 2. What to do after the initial deployment period and the damage it gave. Step 2 and onward is more difficult to give advice on, as they differ much more from step 1 which will remain fairly similar until you decide on a different opening position. Something to consider here however is how aggressive it should be. I base my aggression on urgency. If there is plenty of damage to farm, there's no need to throw your own HP into the mix until you will start losing out on better situations without it or a better position. I think about step 2 as I'm doing step 1. Unlike step 1 it will vary a lot more depending on what is happening on the map, information is scarce early on so step 2 changes often. Having step 2 in place however makes for a pretermined decision to fall back on without any time loss. If step 1 yielded much then step 2 doesn't have to be as aggressive as I'm ahead of pace in my target damage zone. If step 1 yielded little then it'll have to be more aggressive as I now have to compensate. Overcompensating is easy however, and when doing so you need to recognise it as just that, and not teammates being bad. You don't get anything to learn out of your mistake if you blame it on somebody else. Step 3. Step 2 becomes the new step 1, and you think about step 3 the same way you did step 2. The only real difference is that more time has passed in game between them, so the urgency gets higher to hit your target game the longer you go. As you go further into the game the gameplay either ramps up in tempo or massively slows down depending on how the engagements went. A close game slows down, and recognising it as so will let you put the brakes and conserve your HP for enemy mistakes until the game is decided. A steamroll only ramps up in speed, so if you recognise it your need of staying ahead gets higher and higher with time so you adjust your aggression accordingly. Step 4. Use your remaining HP to get as good of a game as possible. I wait with step 4 until the game is noticeably won or lost. Good micromanagement skills net you better games during steamrolls against you with an extra shot or two. When the game is decided, you don't spare any expenses. Survival rate is arbitrary, and I can't recall the last time I saw a good player wish he had a 10% higher survival rate instead of a full shot extra in DPG. If you have a lot of HP to use at this stage then using it to outdamage your teammates is a good idea. When the game is decided, your own HP isn't more valuable than the damage anymore. If the game is won/lost in a seemingly decisive manner, the damage is all that you can get out of it. So squeeze the last drops of it instead of throwing a Hail Mary for the win that virtually never happens anyway. From personal experience I've found that the risky play to win the game is less beneficial to actually winning than playing for the damage. The amount of times you're able to farm your way back into an even HP pool safely are more frequent than winning a lost game off of a Rambo mission. A spot on the map generally takes 10-15 games for me to gauge if they're worthwhile or not, so this is quite a bit more of testing the waters than what people assume. The meta changes, so you can't have a fixed handbook for what to do on every map even if the initial deployment is similar. With it you find many solutions to the situation you're in right now, one you will be in later and eventually you come up with a solid enough answer to everything on that area of the map that you'll start consistently having good games throughout. The more the better honestly, but I generally play tanks with little to no armour, so my focus has is around having a good damage dealt/taken ratio. For people more seasoned in slower and armoured tanks this focus would be more on micromanagement and perfecting your initial deployment. Lower mobility means less ability to rotate, so getting better at prediction and foresight hold more value the lower mobility you have. I talked a bit about emotion and how it's an obstacle for improvement, but there's still more to it to add. Shifting blame. I do this myself and almost every streamer I watch do it too, because accepting blame is difficult. You won't get anything out of a mistake if you blame it on anyone but yourself. It really is a lot of excusing misplay with platitudes in WoT. Arty, XVM and so on screwed your game over for taking an aggressive position. A lot of people write these things off as arty just being arty when in reality they were overreaching. I had this problem a lot when translating from the 3k to 4k barrier. You need to take a breath, get some perspective and look at the situation again. Did you really die because of some BS or were you actually misplaying? If it's BS you can let go of it as those things really are out of your control sometimes, but you're doing yourself a disservice if you let a mistake to learn from go by unnoticed. It's important to hold yourself accountable for your gameplay and if you really do want to improve this is a barrier that is a must to get over or it'll hinder all learning past this point in a fairly cerebral game that requires an understanding of the game that is too complex to put into proper words. There's a fairly good reason most people plateau at some point, and while that plateau is lower in general I can say with certainty that close to every (already) unicum hit a wall because of this. You are fairly confident in considering yourself decent at the game at this point, and your ego is in your way of improvement more than anything else. Tilting's also very common and I envy the very few who seem to be totally unaffected by it. A good mindset really helps here, as you'll see some of the few people who can live off of WoT content that have to keep playing for their income learnt this too. Most people do have the ability to quit whenever their anger gets the better of them, but when you are literally doing your job while playing you don't. Tilting ruins the rest of the session unless you untilt which is easier said than done, so you do whatever you can from preventing tilt from happening from the start. As I said earlier you really have to give up your emotional investment in both performance and outcome. It just doesn't yield anything positive from a performance perspective. Finding a way to un-tilt is good though if you insist on keeping the session going. For me the session ends whenever I notice myself being emotionally invested, both good and bad. If I load up, have a killer game and felt like I really enjoyed that game then that game is it. I had fun, although for a very short time, and then this session won't be a pro-active one forward if I decide to keep on playing anyway. It's important to separate the two, especially when they're so closely linked together for elitists (performance and fun go very hand in hand for me). If you want to learn then emotions can't get the better of you. If you are having fun while playing that's great, but you're also zoning in and going autopilot which is the biggest single detriment to improvement there is. Unlearning auto-pilot is something that would do every online PC gamer a favour in their gameplay by forcing them to re-learn actively (and onward) instead of only learning periodically and then sticking to what they know. You can obviously enjoy yourself while being a productive learner, but it's much, much harder than it looks. If you want to become better at the game you have to learn, and "having to do" something generally makes it a lot less fun even if it's with your goal in mind. My ways of keeping my head straight when I had a bad game, am dead and waiting for my tank that are pretty simple and easy to do. They do the trick for me most of the time, and when they don't I simply quit the session and come back at it with fresh eyes later. I generally only play 1 tank at a time, so this works well for me since I have a game to wait out before my next one. I generally try and watch all my games until they are completed because there's more to take from them after dying. Timestamping - Track rotations and how long they take for other players. If you know how long a rotation takes you can estimate how much will happen in that timespan and how a situation will look when you get there. Just look at the timer at the start and then again when you have what you're looking for. If a rotation is 40-ish seconds, it is for example a perfect rotation for a BC25t after a clip. It matters more on autoloaders since you have a longer string of dead time without being able to deal damage. Knowing this in autoloaders make for much better predictability and an increase in effeciency. If your BC just went on reload and you see a rotation to make that could be good, you have the information on hand that you will be reloaded when getting there. You can deal damage right away. The time spent reloading was spent being useful because you rotated in a situation where you wouldn't deal any damage anyway. Track trading patterns too if you can. Some tanks are tricky to trade against because of their reload timers are off-sync compared to yours. Russian mediums for example can shoot 3 times at a Type 5 on reload before he's reloaded again. If you know this you know how hard you can pressure without risking taking HP back. If you are against a 5A in a russian medium however the reload is off-sync, as you'll be halfway through your third shell when he reloads his second. If he fires and pulls back there, you end up losing the trade at 980 to 640. This means that you don't really have a way to use your RoF as a means of engaging that 5A when there's cover involved. Find a different way or take the bad trade if there's no other way. This is where playing a single tank at a time starts benefitting as these things are much easier to keep track of comparing against the 1 gun (yours) than all tanks. You can do this for pretty much everything, but when playing tanks with higher alpha it matters as single shot trades get more beneficial. A JGPZ wins almost every 1 for 1 trade, so for it to take them makes more sense than a russian medium that will get outtraded. Backseat gaming. I do this to both streamers I watch and to team mates when I'm post mortem. It probably goes without saying that I don't actually tell them what I think, I just try to backseat them in my head to keep my thought process going to learn. You start noticing how big the gap is and how much skill expression there is in the game by doing this, as methodical decision making is so much easier to spot than someone auto-piloting. It's tricky because things don't play out like you want them to to check if you were right, but you can easily mess with ideas and try to emulate a reasonable outcome out of it. I've gotten everything from good openings (mostly from streamers though), to good counters and responses from random pubbies this way that I didn't think of. They probably didn't think of it either, but I saw it work out so I can make use of it. The biggest use of it is probably that I've identified a lot of bad choices and having been attentive during it you will end up avoiding a lot of mistakes you haven't made yet. WoT is a PvP game but I found that treating it as PvE makes more sense. One player and 14 bots against 15 bots make for a more sensible way of looking at performance which shifts the focus from a team effort to win, to a player effort in a numbers game. You are alone and your teammates are no good, now do your best anyway. Consistency needs a solid foundation to build on. and for me this is the general thought process of how I did it. It takes long, but eventually it adds up to being important. The step from 4k to 5k and above was the biggest leap in gameplay for me, and easily the most difficult to approach. The difference between it and the previous level of gameplay was mostly consistency. I'd say that an easy way to put it was that now my median and average game are similar. This wasn't true before, were my median game was almost always higher than my average because of a game here and there going pretty bad. What working through this did for me was raising my average game up to my median, simply having less bad games while the ratio of acceptable to great games stayed the same. This change isn't much more than 500 damage in tier 10s, but it still matters. For me it was the last bit to focus on in the game, and having experience with it - the improvement never ends. I see so many mistakes in my own play in hindsight that I'll keep working on to remove. To me the game isn't at its most competitive state right now, as a constant 3 arties make for much worse experiences in tier 10 where I generally reside so right now I can't say that my improvement has yielded very much recently, but it did lay the ground work for a better time to come. Consistency for example is the only reason I was able to 3mark the ISU-130. The tank on the EU server has 20 or so owners, with none of them playing actively. In attempting the mark over a year ago I just couldn't break past the 90 mark reliably. The damage requirement of a 3500 combined average was simply too high for me to keep with tank tank. I was the only one playing it until skill4ltu got his as well, so the EMA of the ISU-130 mark was set almost entirely by myself until then. We both wound up just waiting it out. The issue I had was with consistency yet again, as I was struggling with finding a way to get reliable damage out when your penetration is worst in tier. (It's a high DPM/alpha TD with okay gun handling and mobility, while having a non-existent gun arc and very low penetration for those of you who don't know of it). I eventually wound up getting it done, but after taking a very long break from it. Just like all of the challenging gun marks this game has to offer with their reward tanks the consistency is what breaks most players. Having to pressure the game for so much damage so reliably makes single mistakes ruin several hours of work, so you can't make mistakes at this level. A lot of players have been bashing their wall against the Chieftain mark lately, and it's because of the same thing. Consistency matters so much when you are basically forced to either have a good game or re-play your last 10 games getting back to where you were. That's what it did for me in the ISU at least, being more aware, having learned more and approaching the game from a PoV based in logic and reason rather than using your gut and autopilot made the push. There's plenty of small pointers here and there to improve your game, but IMO this is the big one that sets you up well. If you have the work ethic to keep learning, you'll become more consistent. Eventually more consistent starts meaning better.

I've been thinking about this, and theres no one real reason that I've been playing this game a lot less. Its a whole pile of different reasons that have added up to make the game as a whole much less fun, and I thought Id share my own thoughts and opinions on what these problems are. Spoiler alert: Artillery isn't one of them, yeah its annoying but Its been in the game since launch and I still found the game plenty fun despite it over the last 8 years I've been playing. NOTE: EVERYTHING HERE IS MY OWN PERSONAL OPINION, YOUR OPINION MAY DIFFER WARNING: MEGA GIANT WALL OF TEXT Vehicle Balance: Im going to start off with The biggest elephant in the room, and my biggest reason. Overall vehicle balance. IMO, balance between vehicles was at its peak around late 2015-mid 2016ish. Its been downhill from there really. Yeah back then the overbuffed E5 existed and the WTE100 was cancer. but those were two outliers, these days the whole game is out of whack. Each new patch consists of new tanks that seem more stupid than the last. (this section may not be in correct chronological order) The Type 5 Heavy with the derp gun was, in my eyes, one of the beginnings of this. Along with the mass removal of weakspots from everything. They Nerfed the E5 and then released the Super conq which was, and still is, as good or better in every single way to the overbuffed E5. the overbuffed E5 would still be considered pretty bad in the current meta. Now then, what could possibly be better than the Super conq? I know! A tank that is literally better than the super conq at everything, except It also does all the things the E5 could of possibly hoped to do better than the super conq even better than that! (like mobility) Enter the Chieftain. It being a CW reward is both good and bad. good because every mouthbreather can't get one and thus theres less of them. bad because it instantly became the meta in CW, pushed the SC out, and you have to have one in a top clan now. They then released the 268v4, which single handedly completely destroyed my desire to play this game. It has never returned to the levels it was before the V4 was released. Im sure everyone remembers, but clan wars became "whoever has the most 268v4s wins, regardless of strategy" it was the most cancer period I've ever seen in this game in my life. And then they nerfed it. barely. they gave it a slap on the wrist. Thankfully it stopped that retarded clan wars meta, however the tank is still grossly Overpowered and needs far more extensive nerfs. Fuck that thing. Meanwhile, I have a special hate for the entire swedish line. the entire fucking line is the most cancer, horrible to play against, gimmick tree they have ever released, and honestly IMO the game would be better if they just flat out deleted the entire nations tree. The Kranvagn is the least cancer, but is still more cancer than most other autoloaders. the STRVs are all absolute cancer tanks that can't do anything except camp and punish people for daring to be aggressive and try and push with their fuck you DPM, fuck you camo, and fuck anyone with a sub 120mm gun armour. They are still my most despised tank in the game. And now the new medium line is out. all of which are completely fucking flat, you can't hit them to save your live, and regardless of how objectively good or bad they are to play, they are just, so far in my experience, completely unfun to play AGAINST. The Wheeled vehicles. I knew, before any stats had even been released, just from WGs first ever description of what they were planned to be, they would be cancer. And they are. they flat out destroy the game IMO. they're disgusting. they're double disgusting for me, who has to try and hit the fucking things with 200 ping. destroying a wheel doesn't even slow them down. They may be fun to play but they're absolutely destructive for gameplay. They never should of been added. They're too fast, they get their own Autoaim+ (a banned mod lol) I've seen them regularly pull off shots doing 70kph that even in a 140/62A would never been possible, from ranges you'd almost never even bother taking on the move shots at. They're a pain in the ass. Lets add to this other honourable mentions, like the 430U/430 which both are stupid with heavy tank armour and medium mobility. The 257 which is unpennable from the side for no reason, the IS-3A and Progettos which are just annoying as fuck to fight. Its a running thing now, regardless of how objectively good or bad the tank is, none of these things are fun to actually play against. Premiums! Now, WG seems to have one or two stances on prems these days. Either its an extremely boring, meh tank, or its fucking OP as shit. its disgusting. the T26E5 was the start, the defender was the turning point. and nowadays, If you see a prem or any tank that has had supertest stats released, theres a 95% chance that tank is coming to live, with little to no changes. Its like the super testers aren't even testing these things. This doesn't even apply only to prems, its applying to everything, which is made even more ridiculous because any person can take one look at the prelimentary stats and immediately deduce that said tank will be OP as shit without even playing it. Which leads me on to my next topic... Rebalancing. Yeah, Im extra salty about this part for reasons Im sure you guess. WG can't just slightly buff or nerf a tank (but mainly buff it seems) they have to try and completely redesign how the tank plays. pointlessly. yes, you know what im talking about. the STB-1. Its already been said, but all it needed was some small buffs to make it more comfortable to play. a turret buff, a gun handling buff. boom done. but instead they had to completely redesign it. Right now, regardless of whether it is actually objectively more capable as a tank, what it is now is just more complicated, and less fun to play. This alone has killed off a large portion of my remaining desire to play the game, the STB was always my fun tank. Playing it for me was always just an enjoyable experience. (which is why I didnt bother 3 marking it for ages because 3 marking is for me, extremely frustrating and completely unfun, in a tank that I normally used to destress) The Currrent STB doesn't do that now. its slower and more complicated. Way less fun. Anyway, back to rebalancing. the STB isn't the only tank they've done this to. They keep revisiting older tanks that just need a small amount of love (although in reality is all the new OP tanks need nerfs) and instead try to needlessly redesign how they play completely. Which makes the game less fun because everything keeps getting changed. And then they bring out new tanks like that ST-II on supertest. that thing is gonna be disgusting, at least it will be to play against. I hope to god it doesn't come out remotely close to that, if at all, but with WGs track record over the last few years Im not optimistic. Maps Maps have gotten less fun as well. Each time they redesign a map It feels worse IMO. for example pilsen, which needed some work but wasn't bad, got redesigned and its current design is absolutely terrible. the entire field is a complete shitshow and is utterly pathetic, while it used to be a pretty fun place to fight. so more than a third of the map is now worthless ground. the middle area was already worthless and still is, so thats another third of the map useless ground. and now we have the 1-2 line in the factories, which isn't useless but they've made it way harder to push or be effective in it. So now its not a remotely fun place to fight. the entire map is a shit show. its one of my banned maps (along with paris) Along with this, Highway, a map I always liked, is now worse. the redesign in the NW corner with the field is worse and now massively favours the north, with souths defensive positions all being way more exposed to fire and getting lit than before, with norths not being changed. the buildings around the north aren't exactly fun places to fight, terrain based fighting is more interesting than building peekaboom wars. New Maps all suck as well. Studzikani needs no introduction, Minsk is like 80% unusable ground with only a few areas being pushable. Neither of them are very fun to play. Ghost town worked in CW, but doesn't work in pubs. Its not a very fun map to play in pubs IMO, mainly because of the coordination required to win it that just doesn't exist in pubs. along with this, the 1.0 redesign of a lot of maps just made them worse or less fun to play on. TD camping bushes or ridges added where they can easily punish anyone trying to actually push or do anything other than camp. Routes that used to be possible are now impossible. (things like dropping off hills and such which now just kill you) - I always hated boosts that allowed you into areas meant to be inaccessible. but going from one accessible area to another is okay IMO, It removed a lot of escape routes and made risk taking far more punishing. thus no one wants to take risks anymore. Clan Wars I can give you the tank comp for 90% of the maps we play in the next campaign right here: 260, Chieftain, 907, EBR, CGC. Sprinkle on the occasional STRV or T100, maybe an IS-7 or a 268v4. Theres little variation, or creativity any more. I mean of course there isn't those tanks are all the best and using any other will just cause you to lose. But its not very fun. This isn't the fault of the clans, its the fault of WG for making tanks so much better than the others. I can't even use my 140 in CW unless there are literally no more unlocked 907s because the 907 is just that much better than the 140 (needlessly I might add) WG was talking about changing CW. This is, IMO, the biggest change it needs. make creative tank comps great again. Even the batchat has been out metad, a tank at one point I never thought would be outmetad. Personal There is the next problem, because I don't play as often any more, I get rusty. so Im playing worse, which frustrates me, which makes me want to play less because Im getting annoyed that I can't play at a level I know I am capable of. Which makes me play even worse on tilt. I need to get over this just by playing more and un rusting but its a vicious cycle, and all the other aforementioned issues are also making me frustrated. so bleh. Thats about it for now. All of these things are, individually, fairly small. but together they just create a pile of compounding issues that generally make the game much less fun than it was. And the problem is, Even if WG started fixing them all right now. and fixed them how (for simplicity sake) I personally would like to see them fixed, It would take them years to get the game back into a good position. New Patches these days don't bring me excitement. they bring me dread as to what they've fucked up this time. So yeah. wall of text. This took me like 45 mins to write, I have an exam tomorrow, and I should be studying. go me.

Hello! First bugfixes of the new decade are in: Fixed issue that prevented tanks from being added to the overall tank table (located at the bottom of your stats page). This requires a stats update, so it might not show up in your page right away. Updated Twitch API for the sponsored / community streamers. Still waiting to validate that everything is working (requires someone to be streaming Tanks), but theoretically they should, which is why they probably won't. Minor database maintenance. Cheers, and happy new decade!

You and your fucking zero key.

I'm going to fucking fix your 0s and Os from now on, because fuck you.

yeah but i have pretty much all your dpgs beat so who's really the champ here

I added this as a featured article on WoTLabs. The link to it will appear pinned at the top of every page. Great article!

@kolni has nothing to prove to you. Also, please stop reporting users if only because 99% of them you bring upon yourself. In return I offer these 2 droids...no wait thats not it. This RO. Take a breather, relax and come back with coherent arguments about tanks. Oh and you are NOWHERE NEAR the level of Garbad or Valchio. That you even think you are is being delusional. You are closer to Mr. Rogers of Wotlabs infamy more than anything else. FYI - @Diriz0n has been RO'd for now. Penalty Given 5 points which will never expire. Restricted from posting - 2 days and 23 hours I know he brings this shit on himself, but to the rest of you, please try to keep it as civil as possible. Thanks,. \ /

i don't think you understand what kind of forum this is, stupidity really doesn't have a place here and you're spreading yours like aids in the 70s. People can disagree on things, that's fine. Telling people they are wrong however requires that you prove you're right. You have yet to be that. Do it and the arguing stops. Maybe the arguing is what you want, I get that. I'm bored too sometimes. But you aren't right. You're a pubbie who does not know how the game works. Here is a great place to learn, and if you are open to learning the forum will treat you accordingly. Now however you're not doing anything of any use to the forum. Think real hard. Has your presence on this forum created any valuable content? Maybe, but not by you. Just get your shit together and realise that other people might know better sometimes. Accept that and you can become better. If you don't care about your performance and don't want to improve, what the actual fuck are you doing here? Go to exposingwot. You'd be a great fit.

the thing is, you almost always are? as someone who has played this game for a living i'm pretty sure there is absolutely zero, zilch, nada you could teach me in this game which should make it simple to understand that when i say you are, you are

Seriously though I and Im pretty sure almost no one here has any real issues with you We just want to know what the hell is up with the 0 key, and the more you completely avoid it the more curious and more meme prone we get over it. Theres literally nothing wrong with most of what you post, no more than anyone else here. Its just the damn 0 key man and I dont know why you are so adament on avoiding just telling us whats up with that to the point where you literally type out one hundred over 100 or even 1OO and go and re edit the Os to posts I edited them to be 0s lol.

Should be like this:

Just throwing out a shout out to you all, I have played the game for a few games now and decided i need to get better so I came here to learn. i am always looking for a mentor to learn and coach me. If i am going to be in this game I definitely want to be the best I can. Thanks all, sorry for any future dumb questions

pm me

Whenever I think I'm full of myself I'm going to come back here and read this quote.

when Dirizon is shitposting so hard he woke up Badmin SR360 AND badmin Pityfool from their eternal slumbers

unironically calling Gasai a great player in 2k19

quick review in case anyone's on the fence about funding Serb's moon base support heavium historically a medium - conventional non-autoloading version of the T54E1 was once tested as a tier 10 med a loooong time ago now dusted off the shelves for the moolah: https://tanks.gg/tank/m48t54e2/stats doesn't actually feel like an E5 gun a m a z e b a l l s meaty 360 alpha with sub 8 reload, good (226) pen and hitscan APCR good accuracy and best in class bloom with .10 base turret bloom - better than a Progetto -10 gun depression aim time only decent at 2.4s, though mitigated by bloom APCR 255 only means you struggle against heavily armoured targets basically the gun of a tier 9 medium overall: all-in-all best in class firepower tied with the Caern (less alpha, more DPM) and the 53TP (more alpha, less DPM). arguably even better than the above two if you fire full gold armour bad to unreliable tumour ~180EA large LFP ~150EA weak-ish UFP ~200EA tall hull larger than the E5 no beak - f no magical drive sprocket turret: 230-250 frontally, prominent shot trap and turret ring overall: more comparable to the Patton than the E5 does not get significantly better with angling or when using gun depression - will bounce some glancing shots 0.4 - 0.5 armour use efficiency which is armoured med territory - snap more for best results - wiggle when reloading mobility 45 top speed, 17 reverse (which is more than the tier 10 patton) 16 hpt baddish terrain resistances with particularly bad soft terrain stats - 3.26 decent traverse + neutral steering 35 degree/s turret traverse <3 gear ratio stuff (needs testing): nippy between 0-30, average heavy acceleration between 30-40, sluggish above 40 overall: goes 40-ish on most terrain but not otherwise significantly faster than a 53TP or an IS-3 good for taking positions and relocating but far from ideal for brawling - things like 50TPs and Chryslers are inexplicably more agile verdict good crew trainer in case you wanted two irrelevant tier 10 heavies decent earner but loses out to Paytriot/Lowe/240 alpha things, goldspam not necessary but addictive again, does not actually play like the E5 - if I had to describe it feels more like the 5A with the Super Conq's gun ridiculously gud at farming - even I can maintain 2k DPG without too much trouble winning potential: tied to Chrysler IMO but you win games by damage whoring and not tanking everything fun factor: as a heavium player this is the most fun I've had in a premium heavy value: IMO worth it if more than 50% off, YMMV OP? https://imgur.com/gallery/R5KFqZM

Remember when this forum used to be a chill safeplace from all the idiots from official forums and in-game? Good times... Also this Dirizon dude really should fix his zero-key

If these go live and my 152mm T49 becomes unplayable i'm unironically quitting the game permanently Fuck this

Hello! If you have been in a clan's page in WoTLabs recently, you probably noticed a slight change in how the clan's WN8 is displayed. While previously there was a single number, now two are shown. The one shown in larger font is the pure average WN8 of every member in the clan, while the second, shown in smaller font directly under the pure average, is what was up until now the "default". This value which we call a battle-weighed value also takes into account the number of battles each player has. The goal of this was to prevent a clan from padding their average WN8 by including several accounts with a low battle count and extremely high WN8. As you know, WN8 as a metric is only really useful after a certain number of games, usually at the very least a couple thousand. Playing a few battles in low tier tanks and stacked with premium options could easily result in an unrealistically high WN8, which would then be weighed as much as someone with 20 thousand battles under their belt, thus skewing the clan's ratings. However, this method also caused a problem where players with very high battle counts could also skew the results, this time downwards, therefore showing numbers that don't properly reflect the clan's overall performance. To solve this, I have added both numbers to the page, with the most prominent one being pure average WN8, and the battle-weighed WN8 shown directly beneath. This should give players more information to make informed decisions when it comes to choosing a clan to apply to. That is all for now, cheers!

Command & Conquer intensifies

i dont see how extending a simple symmetry into a complex one has absolutely anything whatsoever to do with this but if you care to elaborate im all ears on what you wrote though it really doesn't matter, if you are good enough to 3mark them without gold you are good enough to perform well above with it so why don't you? this is the game and your attitude towards it doesn't make sense since 3 marking is a competitive element to the game, and if you dont want to load gold then you're gimping yourself which goes against every sort of competition in history lol if you care about 3 marks but still hold to your pub retard gold sucks values you are a walking paradox my friend

490 alpha, yet it has 1850 DPM (more than a lot of old 320-390 alpha heavies, more than VK 100, Mauerbrecher, Defender, MORE THAN SOME 240 ALPHA TIER 8 MTs) accuracy isn't even godawful for the alpha, it's more accurate than any of those 440 alpha tier 8 heavies wtf 0.19 / 0.19 / 0.14 bloom is pretty disgusting considering that it's pretty slow too, it has better bloom than VK 100 again and that already doesn't have THAT bad gun handling for the alpha, wtf good penetration as well, shell velocity is also less potato than other 128s in the tier turret armor, if it really is that thick with that shape, is arguably better than VK B at tier 9 it's also faster than VK B lmao. In fact, with actually rather decent terrain resists and 12 hp/ton, it's going to hit 30 easily, and it has that typical German 15kph reverse speed too knowing the armor layout of the VK B and Pz VII, it probably has strong LFP too so it doesnt even have frontal weakspots (and that cupola is probably going to be VK 100 v2.0 except its even smaller), and if UFP is 180 mm thick it's going to be around 270 effective or something It's a VK B that loses 20mm side armor, 20mm frontal armor, some penetration, tiny bit of DPM, accuracy and view range, to gain better shell velocity, better mobility, better bloom when moving (lol) and arguably better turret armor. It seems kinda fair at first, but the problem is... ...I'm comparing a tier 8 with a tier 9. Armor layout is going to ultimately judge how stupid the tank actually is but if the LFP is anywhere near 200 mm effective, then GG It seems so stupidly broken atm that I really, really feel like they are going to nerf it (at least the alpha...why does it need a 128, giga-alpha isn't even the main thing of the line, just give it Tiger II's gun or something). WG really hasn't introduced super-P2W premiums in a long time (especially now that Murazor is gone); their recent premiums (other than omegalul buffed IS-3A and possibly some other tanks too) are actually somewhat well balanced. I guess they need to fix that by introducing the next generation bullshit tank. Part of me thinks that this will probably be the next marathon tank; this or the new Skoda.

Well, I finally did it. After 564 games, I finally put enough good ones in a row to get the mark. Also, a screenshot with digi-camo, which I decided to put on it since it's my most played tank. I don't have a screenshot of the final battle since my game crashed while I was loading back to the garage, but it was 8.8k combined. Overall, it was quite a journey. I've learned a lot and become a lot better at the tank. When I first got it, I couldn't figure it out. Luckily, someone pointed me here, where I learned to play it. It is now my most played tank in the game, and will always be one of my favorites. Thank you to all here for the advice, information, replay reviews, and everything else.

This game is finally one of those old MMOs where you haven't played in years... and when you finally log in you're immediately showered with a daily crate, the returning player MEGA crate, 2 special missions reminders, +300 Cow Coins, A Quantum bonus to gem rotations, and +30% to all prestige points for 24 hours.

So I played a few... -Physics vastly improved, no more fear of flipping. -Arty can't drown themselves. -No gold ammo spam. -Shitlords can't snapshot you at 300m due to accuracy decrease; bloom matters a lot more. -Environments are nice and clean instead of cluttered where it's hard to aim and move. -Lower aimtimes across the board feels better. -Can't get gold so there's zero pay to win factor anywhere. -Extremely fast advancement as opposed to painfully long grinds to equip vehicles. -Lack of crew skill variety means no grinding for eternities to have a competitive crew. -Buffs to TDs countered by decreased accuracy and lower zoom which makes long range fire less effective. -No battle stats screen after game means you don't have to see how abysmal every one actually is. -Lack of mods keeps everything even. Now, there's a lot I think is a bad idea. Arty's too strong, tank balance seems rough, and I'm not sure why they changed graphic engines again, this one seems like a big downgrade. But overall, pretty good patch with a lot of overdue improvements.

I can't help but see this as an attempt to try to contrast the old game with the new to remind every one of all the improvements they have made. The problem is so many of the improvements weren't improvements. The old physics where you were stuck to the ground were actually way better for gameplay because while they weren't realistic you also didn't have to constantly worry about flipping, falling, suicide bombers, or some fuck on your own team shoving you into water. 1.0 looked nice graphically but smoothing terrain made flipping even worse, while all the new eye candy crap littering the maps makes it harder to see and shoot. A lot of changes they've made really weren't better, they just made the game look better.

The short version of my opinion is that I went into the sandbox server expecting Wargaming to completely screw everything up and expecting that it will take 2+ years for them to fix it if the changes go through. Wargaming did not let me down. About the ammo changes: In reality the problem is not the ammunition. The problem is many corridor maps that forces tanks to fight frontal with limited or no flanking opportunities and a lack of frontal weakspots that can be reliably hit with fully aimed shots on stationary tanks at any distance further away than ~50 meters. Instead of fixing the cause of the problem, Wargaming is focused on fixing the symptom of the problem. Taking HESH penetration away from the UK tanks removes some skill from the game in my opinion. Knowing when you can use HESH and do more damage than the standard ammo is a skilled decision. Also, removing HESH penetration takes away a unique aspect of gameplay in the UK tech tree vehicles. Reducing the damage of gold/special/premium APCR ammo compared to the HP pool of tanks is a buff to wheeled light vehicles. Its much easier to hsi them at 300+ meters with APCR and now players will need more penetrating hits to destroy them. Removing HE and HESH pen is a buff to wheels light vehicles. Now I can't time my shot properly at closer range to have a higher likelihood of penetrating and doing significant damage. I don't think the ammo changes will reduce the gold/special/premium fired by many players because they will still choose more reliable damage over the possibility of higher damage. About the tech tree changes: Wargaming is removing many low tier tanks that had different or unique aspect to their gameplay that were funa s a new player. I have no idea why tier 10's are being removed. The 113 isn't bad and was worth the grind. It just has been power creeped. Now it seems like a worse(slower less armor worse gun handling) 430U. Wargaming is screwing up the game because they don't even know how to play the game and never listen to above average skill players. I bet if Wargaming asked the top 5% of players what they would change in the game, the answers would be different than the proposed changes.

Jesus. I just logged into the test server and looked things over. If this is the end result, what a disappointment. No apparent nerfs to anything that needs it, they just scaled everything almost flat. At high tier everything has +20% HPs and +20% to damage. Even the arty nerf just basically boils down to forcing people to shoot gold arty shells in order to keep their current damage output. So costing more credits and removing stun is basically it. They haven't changed the cost of ammo at all, so gold ammo appears proportionately more expensive than ever. They haven't even scaled up how much ammo you can carry past tier 5, so the fucking T67 is fine but something like the Type 64 is stuck with even lower potential damage against the hordes of power creeped tier 8 heavies. Basically low tier gameplay might improve because the HPs scale up better, but the three tier spread is actually going to be worse than ever because your gold ammo is weaker. Without compensating for it elsewhere (such as by scaling HPs by class) this is going to make heavies the dominant vehicle and make fighting up suck even more. I was optimistic they had come around, but they really are just steaming forward with the shitty original sandbox plan for World of Red E-100s. EDIT: The more stats I look at the more triggered I get. For a lot of the low tier changes they just moved shit up a tier and gave it some more HPs, maybe +10 view range, blam, this fine. I kid you not they took the Valentine AT which is already bad at tier 3 and just made it a tier 4 with a few more HPs. Same guns, same view range, same everything else. A-20 is now a tier 5 with a few more HPs and +20 view range. Crusader is now a tier 6 light with a few more HPs and maybe +1 RoF. It goes on like this. Amazingly half-assed.

Hello! This morning we had an issue which caused periodic stats to stop appearing. Long story short, server ran out of space again. This has now been patched up, bad records have been deleted and the cache cleared, and your statistics should again be appearing normally! Apologies for the short downtime and inconvenience. Cheers! Never

We should all just have teams of heavies meeting in one corridor shooting each other hull-down and sidescraping with HE. That would be fun. Heavens forbid that someone try to play a mobile tank.

15k bonds is pissy easy to get these days, most players who have been in the game for 4+ years will have gotten 5k last year and will get another 5k this year. Steel Hunter was sub 40 games for me to get to the last rank and that got me 5k bonds, so that is 15k bonds and a CW reward tank right there for just having an account for a long time and playing one event this year. Let's not even talk about farming bonds on tier 10, bonds from Frontline, Bonds from ranked (6-7k I think for reaching top rank, and even easier this season than last), bonds from premium account (25 daily), bonds from the 279e PMs as well. I think I worked out for events and missions this year someone just playing a lot could by the end of the year feasibly farm about 35k bonds alone without farming them on tier 10, so a real no lifer could be approaching 40k - 45k bonds, if you add the two improved equipment from the PvE mode, some people could be literally buying two CW reward tanks and able to pimp out both with a full set of improved equipment. Farming bonds when you want at your own pace pales in comparison to the effort needed to earn a CW reward tank in a month long campaign. So it;s not Elitist at all, its about people getting a hard earned, rare reward that now people will get through a much easier route, thus taking away the value of that original award. I chose M60 as my reward tank because I wanted a unique reward tank that was rare and I worked my ass off for it playing pretty much every night, all night, for a whole month, waiting around, getting shouted at by FCs etc. bleeding thousands of credits. If someone had told me I could farm some bonds in my own time and get the tank I wouldn't have bothered. It's a shitty move by WG, and it sets a precedent for all reward tanks to go this way, the other CW tanks, the Frontline and Ranked rewards, PM rewards, which will then completely undermine those modes if the reward is available in a much simpler way. There are plenty of options WG could have done for the bonds shop, hell they could have come up with a new tier 10 as a special bond shop reward without screwing over clan players. Both tanks are 'meh', and the 215b is downright awful, and the selection of premiums are all bad bar the Patriot and there are better options than that as well (like Cent 5/1), which is another issue with this bonds shop, not only does it piss off CW players by giving away their rewards, there is nothing in it to even interest them either.

why yes I can....and did.

what the fuck is going on in this thread. I don't even know who to mod and who to call an idiot.

It's like oicraftian stole all his 0s and he's really butthurt about it.

Tell me whats up with your 0 key and Ill let you insult him as much as you want unmoderated. (By me, cant speak for other mods)

Do you prefer hull down or side scraping?

Variant A) You get your ammo rack blown up. Variant B) While circle-strafing the Manticore, and laughing your ass off, you drive off a cliff.

The gold spam really started after the sigma nerf to accuracy. We don't spam gold for the pen, we spam gold to compensate for RNG. If we could reliably hit fully aimed shots on weak spots we'd go back to using AP again. Instead, after missing the micro weak spot on a Type 5 with an entire clip of AP from my 50B - and then getting blapped for 1K with an HE round, I didn't just switch the next clip to APCR - I quit carrying AP in it altogether. Make aiming great again.

Just wanna document my proudest ever setup on a butt shot: (1) It all happened on Erlenburg South spawn, about 1 min into battle. I was in the city looking for shots when I noticed that because our heavies were making hardcore pressure, Cent AX wanted to escape. He could either run towards me, or retreat along the riverbanks. (2) For reasons that would make sense in a moment, I wanted to "convince" him to come across the bridge. So I put an HE round to his turret for 300 something dmg. (3) My boy Cent AX was not amused. I successfully attracted his attention, and he decided to cross the bridge. Of course, he couldn't find me at the other end... (4) As our heavies pushed, he was momentarily distracted by sideshot opportunities. This was the moment I hoped for: feelsgud

STB-1 Gun Changes are ass. the better aimtime helps you not miss as many close range shots, but it still derps the fuck out at range the lower alpha is shit and often lets people simply out-trade you.The siege mode dosent work on this tank, it sucks not having the -10 gun depression all the time and the -5-6 on the sides is limiting. and overall the UDES/M48 is a better option at this point if your looking for a ridge line medium. the engine buffs are decent and let you maintain 50 across most terrain alot of the time The turret changes are very good and quite noticeable, your able to bounce a fair amount of shots especially compared to before. but its worth noting that its not immune by any means and can still be 22'd most of the time. Leopard 1 Gun changes are nice actually. The 278 APCR is amazing and having 323 APCR as gold is much more fitting for its "sniper" role the higher alpha IMO is nice as well as the leo 1 often has to minimize exposure so getting more dmg per shot on avg during those opportunistic moments is an improvement for me. the little changes to dispersion accuracy and aim-time ofc are welcome too. mobility changes are hardly noticeable Kharkov Surprise Surprise: its fucking garbage. The entirety of the 1-5 is a TD camp fest that brutally punishes any kind of push (its also completely open to arty) the 6 line where the Trench is located isnt deep enough to be realistically used by anything that isnt a low profile Russian hover med, and will let TD's pop shots into your turret/cupolas otherwise. (its also open to arty) the 7-8 lines where most HT's will be was completely ruined compared to before. They removed alot of the smaller buildings that provided protection and allowed you to move up in the E/F-7 areas, they also put holes/windows in alot of the buildings in that spot along with larger rubble piles. overall this means the city has tunred from a close range brawl to a 100+ meter Hulldown pixel sniper fest. In addition the removal of so many buildings have allowed both TDs from the Fields and arty to loop in opportunistic shots. the 9-line is similar to before so mostly useless, and the 0-line was cut in half and had more rubble piles added for more hulldown pixel cupola sniping fun.

Short answer: Yes. It was really easy to get satisfaction out of WoT in the beginning, but it got harder and harder. Winning ESL games and playing WoT in a proper competitive setting with casting scratched that same itch pretty well when there was some real life consequences of your performance. The pressure wasn't all good though, just as you got those same highs from winning organised games, as the losses beat you up worse than normal. After a bit of much needed insight I realised I wasn't really enjoying winning anymore, I was just addicted to it. I've always been. It wasn't actually WoT I liked either after a while, I just liked being good which is why I struggled so much with quitting. I don't get anywhere near as much fun out of anything competitive as I used to, as WoT's kinda done a number on me there. It's still very engaging though. I enjoy pushing myself instead because that's a source of feel-good that'll never run out as I really do enjoy noticing myself improve. The click moments are my pleasures. Long answer: (read short answer first though)

Blatantly false.

tvp vtu is still better, if it is the counter to a defender it is the counter to this too

you strike me very heavily as a flat-earther

Let's be serious. The goal has never been to "fix" the game, they've known for years what the players want. You can't seriously tell me at this point they don't know removing arty would be more popular than keeping it in or that a 2 tier spread would revive things. The goal is to stretch the game out as long as possible. Games tend to have a shelf life, so they've been withholding the improvements players want as long as the money keeps flowing in. As the player numbers have finally begun to really drop they're now doling out little improvements here and there, just enough they think it will get people to come back and play, where the game becomes a little "new" again. This is just another example, they drop a tiny weight on the scale and then sit back and wait to see how much it tips. See if they need to give anything more of what we want or if this is "enough" to keep people hooked for another 6 months. We won't get an ounce more than that minimum weight and they'd rather err on the side of not enough than too much. At this point they can kindly consume a plethora of dicks. It's like when I was a teenager working at a restaurant and my boss gave me a $0.10/hour raise after I gave him my two week's notice.

The 13 75 generates a lot of tears.